Travel Tramp News Updates

Discover the brutal and bloody story of Sigiriya, Sri Lanka’s iconic and top-rated tourist attraction. High above the forests of central Sri Lanka, a great block of volcanic stone rises from the plains, its summit scarred with the remains of ancient walls, gardens, and pools. This is Sigiriya, better known… Read more »

Why is Ceuta Spanish and not Moroccan? Here’s everything you need to know about Spain’s African exclave. “You see the Spanish flag at the top of the citadel?” asked local tour guide Toni, who was born and raised in the Spanish exclave, as we stood outside the gates of Ceuta’s… Read more »

Discover the curious story of Pheasant Island, a 200-metre-long island in the middle of the Bidasoa River between France and Spain, which changes nationalities every six months. On a quiet stretch of the Bidasoa River between the Basque towns of Irun and Hendaye lies one of the most unusual geopolitical… Read more »

I travelled to Tskaltubo, a former Soviet spa town, to hear the stories of Georgia’s Abkhazian refugees, who still reside inside ‘abandoned’ sanatoriums intended as temporary homes. “Hope is the last thing to die,” Lasha told me, standing in the ruins of an abandoned Soviet-era sanatorium in Tskaltubo. It’s a… Read more »

I travelled into the remote deserts of eastern Jordan in search of a vanishing oasis that once teemed with life. And to learn how conservationists are clawing this wetland back from the engulfing sands. Driving east from Amman, the sun beating down on the dark tarmac, it felt as if… Read more »

Discover the unusual story of Jordan’s ‘panhandle’, a cartographical curiosity in the far eastern desert borderlands between Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The empty highway led northeast from Azraq. Leaving behind the sparse palms and military compounds of this desert outpost, pressing deeper into the basalt-covered plains, it felt as… Read more »

I travelled deep into Jordan’s eastern deserts in search of Winston’s Hiccup, a cartographical anomaly supposedly drawn by drunken statesmen which defined the Middle East’s modern borders. The road was long. The tarmac was scorching hot. And the basalt deserts were eerily quiet. The lingering quiet engulfed me, only to… Read more »

From ancient mosaic maps to crumbling Byzantine ruins, discover the best things to do in Madaba, Jordan’s surprising Christian city. Located some 30 kilometres south-west of Amman, the Jordanian capital, Madaba is one of the Middle East’s most intriguing cities. Better known as the ‘City of Mosaics’ (for its historic Byzantine… Read more »

Discover the King’s Highway, an ancient trade route which could be the world’s oldest continuously used road. Here’s what happened when I road tripped its surviving fragments in modern-day Jordan! The King’s Highway is one of the oldest continuously used roads in the world. For more than 5,000 years, it… Read more »

Discover the story of the Hejaz Railway, an audacious Ottoman-era plan to unite the Middle East, and how it could soon be resurrected. The Hejaz Railway was the most ambitious engineering project the Ottoman Empire ever embarked on. Intended to link Constantinople—modern-day Istanbul—to the holy city of Mecca, in what’s… Read more »